Friday, June 27, 2014

6/12/14 Day 147 Climbing Mount Snowdon

The weather is supposed to be superb today, so we got the day off from our volunteer program to climb Snowdon, which standing at 1,085 meters is the largest mountain in Wales or England. We hitch our way the 50 or so miles with a plan for ascending from either the East or West of Snowdon (whichever a ride more easily delivers us to). Our fate is determined to be the East as we get a ride all the way to the Rhyd Ddu car park, with a really sweet couple from Manchester who even gave us their number for a lift home if we are in the same area around 18:00. The clocks have just struck noon and our ascent begins from Rhyd Ddu. The path is very well marked even thought it is one of the less common of the six standard trails up. The walk up to the summit is moderately steep, but we have been climbing quite a lot of hills these last two months and we reach the summit in one hour and 45 minutes, fast considering most trail guides suggest about 6 hours total. As expected at the top there is a small train, and a cafe that resembles a ski lodge, and so many people! This is one of the few mountains in the world that has a railway running right up to the summit. We relax at the summit eating our lunch until the midges become too intrusive for us to handle, silently crowding us out in a fog. We head for the Miner's Track to descend the opposite side of the mountain. The steps carved into the trail are steep and laborious to skip and jump down, just thinking about going up this path seems like it would be a really difficult task. We are treated with beautiful lake blue views on the way and blue skies too! We get a lift to the nearby town and are only standing for a minute or two before a car swerves in front of us swinging open the door and asking if we would like a lift, it's our Manchester couple! What are the chances that they come across us at an earlier time than they expected to be driving through and the opposite side of the mountain, apparently there was a road diversion working in our favor on this one!

Our Snowdon waymarker

Sheep hole!

Summit lodge

And from the outside

And again with the train pulling up to vomit out more lazy tourists

Buh-Bye

This amazing water drip, unfortunately covered by a grate, still very alluring